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Why Avengers 4 Probably Won’t Be 3 Hours Long

Back in the summer, while chatting to Collider, Avengers 4 directors Joe and Anthony Russo turned heads when they said that the upcoming sequel could be 3 hours long. Of course, we still don’t know the exact runtime of the film, and as such, many have been under the assumption that that’ll be it. However, when you stop and think about it for a minute, it just doesn’t seem very likely that the final cut will actually be 180 minutes, or even anywhere close to that.

MCU Cosmic has published a new report today to explain why, despite the fact that we’d have no problem sitting through 3 hours of Avengers action, the film will probably come in closer to 2 hours. For one, we know that the final edit won’t be completed until March, and since there’s no picture lock yet, no one actually knows the real runtime or what it’ll end up being. Not even the directors themselves.

“We’ve worked on the edit all summer and we’re excited to finally get these missing pieces in the film and then we expect to be in post through the fall and winter,” Anthony Russo said in a previous interview. “We hope to be done by March.”

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Perhaps more importantly though is that at 3 hours, Disney would be limited to the number of showtimes Avengers 4 could have per day and thus, it’d impact the box office numbers. Given that this is perhaps the biggest Marvel release ever, you can be sure that they’ll be doing everything in their power to ensure it at least matches, if not outperforms, Infinity War. And at 3 hours long, it’d be pretty damn tough to hit $2 billion. Especially in the summer blockbuster season.

In conclusion, MCU Cosmic predicts that theaters will receive the official runtime in late March or early April, and only then will we know for sure how long Avengers 4 is. But given everything outlined above, it’d be very surprising if it actually stretches on for 180 minutes. If it does, though, you certainly won’t hear any complaints out of us.